If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Are AMD vga a viable solution on Linux right now?

12-11-2011, 06:02 AM

I'm buying a new pc. The PC will use exclusively a linux distro (very likely a choice between opensuse 12.1 and Xubuntu). Mostly I use 3d capabilities for games under wine, some work with graphic software and video-editing too.
Also it would be nice to have flash video and in general gpu acceleration for movies.
I'm looking for a vga, and to be honest looking also at the review on this forum about the gtx 550 Ti , AMD solutions seem the best to me as the right compromise between price.
I'm in particular pointing at the 6770 which use less power, cost 20 euro less and it seems outperforming a bit the gtx 550 TI.

Normally I wouldn't consider switching to AMD, but I have another machine mounting a 460gtx. Well lately I'm incurring in some problems which seem/might be related to the Nvidia graphic drivers:
repeated crashes due to flash plugin, occasional freezes on the desktop that force me to manually switch off the power. I made some research and other have addressed those problems to Nvidia drivers.
Even with latest drivers nothing changed.

Now what I'd like to know if anyone is using amd card with the latest drivers and playing games under wine. Also I'd like to know what problems with video acceleration or 2d performance might occur using a amd vga.Also extremely important: I have a dual-monitor setup

Comment

With dual monitor, you should stay away from nVidia. It's hard to configure and you can't hotplug monitors.

But running Wine on AMD hardware is often problematic. It might have been fixed in some driver version but I'm not sure. I don't use AMD hardware that much.
I recommend to use the latest driver from AMD's website instead of the driver packages from your distro as 11.11 seems to fix a lot of bugs.

Flash video acceleration is only working with nVidia's proprietary driver as Adobe Flash only supports VDPAU. This is of course a different story with free Flash replacements.

2D performance of AMD is decent, when you use a recent driver.

When you intend to use Gnome Shell you'd better wait some time till AMD has released the 12.1 driver. They have promised to fix the Gnome Shell problems in that driver. 11.11 is already working somehow but some people are still having problems with it.